Paranoia (27 page)

In other words, he knew who I really was.

“Adam!” he persisted. “Adam Cassidy! Hey, what are
you
doing here?”

I couldn’t exactly ignore him anymore, so I turned back. He had one hand on the elevator doors to keep them from closing.

“Oh, hey, Kevin,” I said. “You work here now?”

“Yeah, in sales.” He seemed thrilled, like this was a high-school reunion or something. He lowered his voice. “Didn’t they kick you out of Wyatt because of that party?” He made a sort of sniggering sound, not nasty or anything, just kind of conspiratorial.

“Nah,” I said, faltering for a second, trying to sound lighthearted and amused. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”

“Yeah,” he said dubiously. “Where’re you working here?”

“Same old same old,” I said. “Hey, nice to see you, guy. Sorry, I’ve got to run.”

He looked back at me curiously as the elevator doors closed.

This was not good.

PART FIVE
B
LOWN

Blown:
Exposure of personnel, installation (such as a safe house) or other elements of a clandestine activity or organization. A blown agent is one whose identity is known to the opposition.

—Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage

46

I was screwed.

Kevin Griffin knew I wasn’t on the Lucid project back at Wyatt, knew I wasn’t any superstar either. He knew the real story. He was probably already back at his cubicle looking me up on the Trion intranet, amazed to see me listed as executive assistant to the president and CEO. How long would it be before he started talking, telling stories, asking around? Five minutes? Five
seconds?

How the hell could this have happened, after all the careful planning, the laying of the groundwork by Wyatt’s people? How could they have
let
Trion hire someone who could sabotage the whole scheme?

I looked around, dazed, at the cafeteria’s deli counter. Suddenly I didn’t have any appetite. I took a ham-and-cheese sandwich anyway, because I needed the protein, and a Diet Pepsi, and went back to my new office.

Jock Goddard was standing in the hall near my office talking to some other executive type. He caught my eye, held up an index finger to let me know he wanted to talk to me, so I stood there awkwardly at a distance while he finished his conversation.

After a couple of minutes Jock put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, looking solemn, then led the way into my office.

“You,” he said as he sat down in the visitor’s chair. The only other place to sit was behind my desk, which felt all wrong—he was the goddamned CEO!—but I had no choice. I sat down, smiled at him hesitantly, didn’t know what to expect.

“I’d say you passed with flying colors,” Goddard said. “Congratulations.”

“Really? I thought I blew it,” I said. “I didn’t exactly feel comfortable taking someone else’s side.”

“That’s why I hired you. Oh, not to take sides against me. But to speak truth to power, as it were.”

“It wasn’t truth,” I said. “It was just one guy’s opinion.” Maybe that was going a little too far.

Goddard rubbed his eyes with a stubby hand. “The easiest thing in the world for a CEO—and the most dangerous—is to be out of touch. No one ever really wants to give me the unvarnished truth. They want to spin me. They’ve all got their own agenda. Do you like history?”

I’d never thought of history as something you could “like.” I shrugged. “Some.”

“During the Second World War, Winston Churchill set up an office outside of the chain of command whose job was to give him the straight, blunt truth. I think he called it the Statistical Office or something. Anyway, the point was, no one liked to give him bad news, but he knew he had to hear it or he couldn’t do his job.”

I nodded.

“You start a company, have fortune smile upon you a few times, and you can get to be almost a cult figure among folks who don’t know any better,” Goddard continued. “But I don’t need my, er, ring kissed. I need candor. Now more than ever. There’s an axiom in this business that technology companies inevitably outgrow their founders. Happened with Rod Canion at Compaq, Al Shugart at Seagate. Apple Computer even kicked out Steve Jobs, remember, until he came riding back in on his white horse and saved the place. Point is, there are no old, bold founders. My board has always had deep wells of faith in me, but I suspect those wells are starting to run dry.”

“Why do you say that, sir?”

“The ‘sir’ stuff has got to stop,” Goddard snapped. “The
Journal
piece was a shot across the bow. It wouldn’t surprise me if it came from disgruntled board members, some of whom think it’s time for me to step down, retire to my country house, and tinker with my cars full-time.”

“You don’t want to do that, do you?”

He scowled. “I’ll do whatever’s best for Trion. This damned company is my whole life. Anyway, cars are just a hobby—you do a hobby full-time and it’s no fun anymore.” He handed me a thick manila folder. “There’s an Adobe PDF copy of this in your e-mail. Our strategic plan for the next eighteen months—new products, upgrades, the whole kit and caboodle. I want you to give me your blunt, unvarnished take—a presentation, whatever you want to call it, an overview, a helicopter ride.”

“When would you like it?”

“Soon as you possibly can. And if there’s any particular project you think you’d like to get involved in, as my emissary, be my guest. You’ll see there are all kinds of interesting things in the pipeline. Some of which are quite closely held. My God, there’s one thing in the works, codenamed Project AURORA, which may reverse our fortunes entirely.”

“AURORA?” I said, swallowing hard. “I think you mentioned that in the meeting, right?”

“I’ve given it to Paul to manage. Truly mind-blowing stuff. A few kinks in the prototype that still need to be ironed out, but it’s just about ready to be unveiled.”

“Sounds intriguing,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I’d love to help out on that.”

“Oh, you will, no doubt about that. But all in good time. I don’t want to distract you just yet from some of the housecleaning issues, because once you get caught up in AURORA . . . well, I don’t want to send you in too many directions at once, spread you too thin.” He stood up, clasped his hands together. “Now I’ve got to head over to the studio to tape the Webcast, which is
not
something I’m looking forward to, let me tell you.”

I smiled sympathetically.

“Anyway,” Goddard said, “sorry to plunge you in that way, but I have a feeling you’re going to do just fine.”

47

I arrived at Wyatt’s house at the same time as Meacham, who made some crack about my Porsche. We were shown in to Wyatt’s elaborate gym, in the basement level but, because of the landscaping, it wasn’t below ground. Wyatt was lifting weights at a reclining bench—a hundred fifty pounds. He wore only a skimpy pair of gym shorts, no shirt, and looked more bulked-up than ever. This guy was Quadzilla.

He finished his set before he said a word, then got up and toweled himself off.

“So you get fired yet?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“No, Goddard’s got things on his mind. Like the fact that his company’s falling apart.” He looked at Meacham, and the two men chortled. “What’d Saint Augustine have to say about that?”

The question wasn’t unexpected, but it came so abruptly I wasn’t quite prepared. “Not that much,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Wyatt said, coming closer to me and staring, trying to intimidate me with his physical presence. Hot damp air rose from his body, smelling unpleasantly like ammonia: the odor of weight lifters who ingest too much protein.

“Not that much that I was around for,” I amended. “I mean, I think the article really spooked them—there was a flurry of activity. Crazier than usual.”

“What do you know about ‘usual’?” said Meacham. “It’s your first day on the seventh floor.”

“Just my perception,” I said lamely.

“How much of the article’s true?” said Wyatt.

“You mean, you didn’t plant it?” I said.

Wyatt gave me a look. “Are they going to miss the quarter or not?”

“I have no idea,” I lied. “It’s not like I was in Goddard’s office all day.” I don’t know why I was so stubborn about not revealing the disastrous quarter numbers, or the news about the impending layoffs. Maybe I felt like I’d been entrusted with a secret by Goddard, and it would be wrong to break that confidence. Christ, I was a goddamned mole, a spy—where did I get off being so high and mighty? Why was I suddenly drawing lines: this much I’ll tell you, this much I won’t? When the news about the layoffs came out tomorrow, Wyatt would go medieval on me for holding back. He wouldn’t believe I hadn’t heard. So I fudged a little. “But there’s something going on,” I said. “Something big. Some kind of announcement coming.”

I handed Wyatt a folder containing a copy of the strategic plan Goddard had given me to review.

“What’s this?” Wyatt said. He set it down on the weight bench, pulled a tank top over his head, and then started leafing through the document.

“Trion’s strategic plan for the next eighteen months. Including detailed descriptions of all the new products in the pipeline.”

“Including AURORA?”

I shook my head. “Goddard did mention it, though.”

“How?”

“He just said there was this big project codenamed AURORA that would turn the company around. Said he’d given it to Camilletti to run.”

“Huh. Camilletti’s in charge of all acquisitions, and my sources say Project AURORA was put together from a collection of companies Trion’s secretly bought over the last few years. Did Goddard say what it was?”

“No.”

“You didn’t
ask?
”

“Of course I asked. I told him I’d be interested in taking part in something so significant.”

Wyatt, paging through the strategic plan, was silent. His eyes were scanning the pages rapidly, excitedly.

Meanwhile, I handed Meacham a scrap of paper. “Jock’s personal cell number.”

“
Jock?
” said Meacham in disgust.

“Everyone calls him that. It doesn’t mean we’re asshole buddies. Anyway, this should help you trace a lot of his most important calls.”

Meacham took it without thanks.

“One more thing,” I said to Meacham as Wyatt continued reading, fascinated. “There’s a problem.”

Meacham stared at me. “Don’t fuck with us.”

“There’s a new hire at Trion, a kid named Kevin Griffin, in Sales. They hired him away from you—from Wyatt.”

“So?”

“We were sort of friends.”

“Friends?”

“Sort of. We played hoops together.”

“He knew you at the company?”

“Yep.”

“Shit,” Meacham said. “That
is
a problem.”

Wyatt looked up from the document. “Nuke him,” he said.

Meacham nodded.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It means we’ll take care of him,” Meacham said.

“This is valuable information,” Wyatt said at last. “Very,
very
useful. What does he want you to do with it?”

“He wants my overall take on the product portfolio. What’s promising, what isn’t, what might run into trouble. Whatever.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“He told me he wants a helicopter ride over the terrain.”

“Piloted by Adam Cassidy, marketing genius,” Wyatt said, amused. “Well, get out a notepad and a pen and start taking notes. I’m going to make you a star.”

48

I was up most of the night: unfortunately, I was starting to get used to this.

The odious Nick Wyatt had spent more than an hour giving me his whole take on the Trion product line, including all sorts of inside information, stuff very few other people would know. It was like getting Rommel’s take on Montgomery. Obviously he knew a hell of a lot about the market, since he was one of Trion’s principal competitors, and he had all sorts of valuable information, which he was willing to give up for the sole purpose of making Goddard impressed with me. His short-term strategic loss would be his long-term strategic gain.

I raced back to the Harbor Suites by midnight and got to work on PowerPoint, putting the slides together for my presentation to Goddard. To be honest, I was pretty amped up about it. I knew I couldn’t coast; I had to keep performing at peak. As long as I had the benefit of inside information from Wyatt, I’d impress Goddard, but what would happen when I didn’t? What if he asked my opinion on something, and I revealed my true, ignorant self? Then what?

When I couldn’t work on the presentation anymore, I took a break and checked my personal e-mail on Yahoo and Hotmail and Hushmail. The usual junk-mail spam—“Viagra Online BUY IT HERE VIAGRA NO PRESCRIPTION” and “BEST XXX SITE!” and “Mortgage Approval!” Nothing more from “Arthur.” Then I signed on to the Trion Web site.

One e-mail leaped out at me: It was from [email protected]. I clicked on it.

SUBJ:
You

FROM:
KGriffin

TO:
ACassidy

Dude! Great seeing you! Nice to see you looking so slick & doing so well—way to go! Very impressed by your career here. Is it something in the water? Give ME some!

I’m getting to know people around Trion & would love to take you to lunch or whatever. Let me know!